ABSTRACT
In this and the following chapter we look in detail at the pattern of constituency campaigning during the 1992 general election in order to provide a picture of constituency electioneering in modern elections and to answer a number of questions: How widely are new campaigning techniques employed and are they altering significantly the nature of local campaigns? Do campaigns vary according to the electoral status of the seat? Are there systematic differences in the types of campaign run by the different parties? The evidence on which our discussion is based comes mainly from our survey of election agents. Since the number of responses from the nationalist parties was relatively small, we focus on the campaigns mounted by the Conservatives, Labour and the Liberal Democrats. To help structure the material it is useful to distinguish six broad aspects of local campaigning:
